


Something about the color purple

by Navyrants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pre-Relationship, mercy has trouble opening up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7104757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Navyrants/pseuds/Navyrants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After fifteen years, Angela Ziegler has forgotten how to let people behind her walls. It takes her weeks, months to remember. Fortunately, Fareeha Amari is decently patient and <em>very</em> curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something about the color purple

**Author's Note:**

> Brief note--this was written before Ana's reveal, so I was working under the assumption she was dead or that Pharah didn't know she was alive. Also written before it was confirmed Mercy was a teenager when she joined Overwatch, so just a heads up on inconsistencies with the canon timeline as we know it now.

Pharah was used to being close with her teammates. That sort of thing happened when you were entrusting them with your very life day in and day out. She didn’t mind it--in fact, she quite enjoyed the openness she often shared with them. She liked knowing the sort of people she was sticking her neck out for on the battlefield, and she returned the courtesy by opening up to them as well.

This was true for her unit in the military, and it was true for her team at Helix Security International. As far as she was concerned, it extended to everyone she would ever work with. It became a habit. So when she was invited to join the reformed Overwatch---secretly, given that Overwatch activity was _technically_ illegal worldwide---She’d assumed it would be much the same.

For the most part, she wasn’t actually wrong. Many of her comrades were perfectly willing to share their lives with her, over drinks in the common room or just as idle talk while training. In fact, there was only one exception to the rule: Doctor Angela Ziegler.

Pharah knew about Angela---Mercy, as the public knew her. Pharah had a photo on her nightstand and posters bearing those mechanical wings and stories in her mother’s voice about the good doctor. She knew as much about her as anyone could know about anyone without ever actually meeting them.

The problem was that that was exactly how much she knew, even months after joining the ragtag group. She couldn’t count the number of conversations they’d had, but somehow none of them have revealed even the smallest bit of information about Angela.

She found it very strange, because Angela had always seemed the most warm, open, and welcoming out of all of them, but the realization that she knew nothing substantial about her had struck Pharah like one of her own rockets.

It was frustrating, yes, but moreover it was _concerning_ to someone who was accustomed to knowing her teammates on the battlefield and off it. How could she protect someone in the battle if she didn’t know them?

It unsettled her.

She wondered about Mercy, and she worried. What purpose did she have, being so closed off? How long has she been doing this? Since she joined the original Overwatch, or even before that?

Just like everything else about her, it was impossible to know.

 

Sparring with Zaryanova, Pharah decided, was the best course of action. The Russian wasn’t fully aware of her own strength and her partners never escaped without injury---and a set of profuse apologies. Granted, the damage was rarely enough to actually _require_ a trip to the med bay, but it wouldn’t be too suspicious if she wanted to get it healed up faster.

Besides, as far as excuses to see someone went, at least this one also posed the challenge of squaring up with Russia’s greatest fighter. Pharah liked a challenge.

Mercy, for her part, certainly saw through it. If not when Egyptian showed up at her door with very minor injuries, then definitely the second she began asking probing questions.

They were simple and small; queries with the hopes of stockpiling details about the doctor, but even those were deflected. Pharah was not easily daunted, though. She returned again and again, several times a week, each time with narrower, shallower questions. And she was rewarded with a gradual change in Angela’s reaction.

The doctor began letting a silence fall between them. First, just a split second hesitation before deflecting, then several seconds of a held breath followed by a sigh and a subject change. Fareeha began to realize that Angela _did_ want to open up, to tell her the things she’d been asking, but something was stopping her.

Habit, Fareeha thought. This was just as much a habit for Mercy as opening up was a habit for Pharah.

Strange, how differently they could evolve.

 

* * *

 

 

Angela Ziegler is scared. She is terrified. She is examining herself logically and knows she is overreacting, but her rationality just can’t reach the fear that’s knotting in her stomach. She shouldn’t be acting like this. What’s her problem?

Fareeha Amari, with Ana’s tired smile and dark hair and a mirrored tattoo under her eye. Ana’s height and Ana’s musculature and Ana’s jaw, Ana’s unusual brand of charisma. Angela looks at her and sees Ana, a friend lost long ago, but she also sees something more. A friend to be had now, someone to be trusted, if only she could open herself up.

And therein lies the problem. She’s trying, she swears she’s trying, but fifteen long years of self-imposed isolation seems to have rusted her locks shut.

But Amari is persistent, and for that she’s grateful. Angela doesn’t want her to give up, doesn’t want to watch the hope of friendship fade. She doesn’t want to disappoint her. So she keeps trying, keeps pushing for the words to come out, to actually answer the questions instead of brushing them off.

It’s difficult, working to convince herself that she can do this. She no longer needs to prove herself, no longer needs to provide constant reassurance that she belongs. She already knows it, everyone else already knows it, God above and the devil below know it. Somehow, though, she still can’t shake some odd, irrational fear---that if she stops being untouchable, even to her friends and teammates, even for a _second_ , then everyone else is vulnerable, too.

It’s born from her place on the battlefield, she thinks. It springs up in the cracks between where she stands and where her fallen comrades are rising thanks to her extensive research and training. It bubbles forth from her staff, intertwining with the stream of healing light connecting her to frontline soldiers. It’s there, directly under her feet and in every inch of distance between herself and each of her friends. It’s in the knowledge that without her, there would be immeasurably more casualties.

She stands between Overwatch and a truly gruesome end.

So what happens if the life of Overwatch becomes vulnerable? The entire organization is vulnerable, of course.

And it’s absolutely ridiculous, she knows, because she’s talking about _Pharah._ Another member of Overwatch, her mother’s daughter, and a damn good soldier. Nothing about this is making her vulnerable or weak, but the fear is so deeply rooted in her that she can’t pull it up. She desperately wants to.

Thank the heavens Fareeha seems to understand that, because she keeps coming back. Angela is fully aware that there’s no real reason for these visits; the spars with Aleksandra are an excuse. Pharah would normally never visit the med bay for something so trivial, but three times a week she steps into the sterilized room and points to a small cut or a large bruise and ask for healing.

And then she would ask about Angela. Just a few questions at a time, hoping for any bit of information, and Mercy tried harder and harder to actually answer them.

It takes weeks. Weeks of probing questions, until finally Angela can manage to give an answer.

“Your favorite color, then? Surely you can tell me that much.”

And there's a long, long silence between them, unlike ever before. Angela's fingers are still on Fareeha's arm where she'd been wrapping a bandage, and her lips part very slightly to draw in a tiny breath. Her voice comes low and soft, almost strained but not quite, and Fareeha is shocked to hear it at all---

"Purple. I like purple."

She kind of wants to laugh at how they both treat such an inconsequential detail, but she knows it means more than it says. Fareeha stares at her, and suddenly she feels flustered. She can feel that irrational fear rising again but she ignores it, because she refuses to regret this. It’s just a color, it’s quite possibly the smallest, most insignificant thing she could ever reveal about herself, but the fact that she hasn’t told anyone since before joining the original Overwatch hangs in the back of her mind like a weight.

There had to be a _reason_ for that, didn’t there?

Pharah, god bless her, seems to sense the shift in Angela’s mood and gingerly slides off the examination table, thanking the doctor quietly for tending to her (very mild) wounds and taking her leave.

Mercy lowers herself into the chair at her desk and begins the extensive task of convincing herself it’s perfectly alright to talk about herself.

She doesn’t sleep that night.

 

The next day, there are no missions to run and the med bay is quiet. Angela is eternally thankful, because she is still so tired and so conflicted. She tries to focus on her research, at least, but her mind keeps drifting back to Fareeha Amari. Part of her hopes she doesn’t cross her path today. Mercy is worried that now she’s managed one answer, Pharah will expect more right away.

And why shouldn’t she? Why would it be so hard? It’s frustrating to think that her anxiety could be so stifling. Why couldn’t she just say the things she wanted to say? She didn’t know--she just knew that she couldn’t.

So when Fareeha saunters in that afternoon without so much as a scratch on her (and therefore no excuse), Mercy is worried. Mercy is worried about pressures and expectations she knows she can’t fulfill, so at first she keeps her eyes on her research and waits for the questions tensely.

When the questions don’t come, she turns and finds Fareeha reclining comfortably in a chair against the wall near her, just watching. The silence is strange, except not, because it’s the same silence that’s been falling between their bodies since this whole ordeal started. A familiar lack of verbality that suited each of them so well, in different ways. Angela is waiting. Fareeha is observing.

And those eyes are on her. The eyes that could so easily have been Ana’s, but the tattoo is on the wrong side, and there’s a softness---almost naivete---that Ana had never had in the entire time Angela knew her. This is not Ana and the separation between mother and daughter has never been so distinct in the doctor’s mind.

Then Fareeha sits up and leans forwards, and she finally looks as though she’s going to speak. Angela braces herself.

“Would you like to hear about me, Dr. Ziegler?” Her voice is pleasant and her accent smooth, like dark chocolate melting on your tongue. Angela feels some of the tension leak out of her body, and she realizes that she doesn’t really know much about Pharah, either.

She nods, and hopes the soldier already has a place to start because she doesn’t even know what questions to ask. And she does---she pauses for a moment, like she’s gathering herself, gives Mercy one last once-over, and then begins.

 

* * *

 

 

Pharah is finally beginning to understand Mercy. She thinks she is, anyway---it’s hard to tell, but the doctor is opening up just the tiniest bit at a time.

She thinks it’s something about age. She remembers her mother telling her that Angela was in her early 20s when she joined, and Fareeha can only imagine the sort of pressure that would have come with the job. Chief of medical research for the world’s most prestigious organization, and under international scrutiny should things go wrong; Pharah could see why she might feel the need to appear untouchable. And now, 15 years down the line, being untouchable is so ingrained in her that she had to actively fight against it to open up.

All Fareeha wants to do is help.

She sees the effort Angela is putting into this; the pauses, the conflict in her eyes, finally managing the smallest answer imaginable. She appreciates it. And she wonders what she’s let Angela know about her in return.

The answer is not much, if she’s honest. While she’s never tried to hide anything, most of her conversations with Mercy have been spent trying to figure her out, not sharing her own personal details. And maybe, as a thanks for trying so hard, it was time to change that.

So she talks. She talks about growing up in Egypt, about the people she remembers from school, and a cat that followed her around town sometimes because she’d feed it leftover bits from her lunch. She talks about childhood injuries from being far too reckless and chuckles at the look of concern on Mercy’s face. She talks about joining the army and the people she met, she talks about the men and women in her unit and the trouble they got into some nights when they went out drinking. She talks about her dreams of standing proud in Overwatch’s ranks and of soaring above a battlefield in victory.

(She avoids most talk of her mother, because that’s still a touchy subject. She hopes Angela doesn’t mind.)

She talks about how crushed she’d felt when the news of Overwatch’s disbanding spread, and she talks about the Reinhardt poster she’d plastered on the wall above her bed and the photo she’d kept on her nightstand that her mother had sent her---and she pulls it out then, gingerly, from inside her coat. It’s wide and short and Fareeha can see a hint of recognition in Angela’s eyes even before she scoots her chair closer so they can look at it together.

On the left there’s Reyes and Morrison, legends to Fareeha. Torbjӧrn, a brilliant engineer she’s had the pleasure of getting to know over her time with the reformed organization, then Mercy herself, an affectionate gaze turned toward an overly excited Tracer and a pleased Winston. Reinhardt, crouching to fit into the frame, and Genji Shimada, and Jesse McCree. Finally, on the far right, Ana Amari--standing tall and saluting proudly with her sniper rifle at her side.

Fareeha has to pause a moment here, to shake herself out of thoughts of her mother and the rest of the original team. Then she’s talking again, about how she’d admired Angela’s work especially, and how she sometimes wishes she’d chosen a path to make that sort of difference in the world. She trails off there, letting the quiet settle over them as she settles back in her seat, like an itchy worn blanket, almost comfortable. Then Angela speaks, low and almost, almost strained, just like before.

“You know,” and she pauses, takes a deep breath. “I didn’t even like Overwatch. Before, I mean. At first. So...militaristic. So much violence. I had suspicions. But the good I could do with them...that was all I ever wanted. That’s all I want.” And this silence now _is_ comfortable, and familiar, and she knows she doesn’t need words right now. She knows Mercy doesn’t need words, either. Instead, she nods, reaches out to take the doctor’s hand, and squeezes her fingers.

Because that’s all either of them wants, isn’t it? To do good. To protect the innocent. To save lives. It’s their shared goal, their purpose in life. It’s what keeps them both going.

They sit and revel in that, knowing there is someone else like them. Pharah wonders if she couldn’t be more like Mercy in her methods. Mercy wonders if Pharah isn’t exactly what the original Overwatch needed to keep from falling apart.

They both resolve to be better.

**Author's Note:**

> I asked if you guys wanted to see more and the answer has been emphatically yes! I'll definitely be continuing this, and I already have some things written down. Stay tuned!


End file.
